Stephen Fry quotes from QI

Stephen Fry

But perhaps, you know, we should believe in Adam and Eve. Geneticists have established that every woman in the world shares a single female ancestor who lived a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Scientists actually call her "Eve", and every man shares a single male ancestor called "Adam". It's also been established, however, that Adam was born eighty thousand years after Eve. So the world before him was one of heavy to industrial-strength lesbianism, one assumes.

Stephen Fry

While double-checking this ... on the Internet, we came up with the extraordinary information that it's considered polite to express joy by eating snow and to send unwanted guests away by biting their leg, an normal behaviour to wipe your mouth on the sofa. This is actually true, the researchers were wrtiting this down with great excitement about Burma, only to discover in the end that Burma turned out to be the name of a poodle belonging to the author of the website

Stephen Fry

Welcome to QI, the closest modern equivalent to Lions versus Christians.

Stephen Fry

And Alan goes...

Stephen Fry

Minus 10 to Alan already before we’ve even begun our first round.

Stephen Fry

But isn't that how socialism was invented, that someone said, "Come, let us lick each other's elbows"?

Stephen Fry

Who are the Lords of Shouting?

Stephen Fry

What's long and pink and hard in the morning? Answer - The Financial Times crossword.

Stephen Fry

They are homophones. They do sound the same … and they hate gay people.

Stephen Fry

We don't know anything particularly extraordinary about his birth, we just wanted, uh, Laughing Boy [gestures to Alan] here to fall into the trap.

Stephen Fry

He, of course, won by a short head- no... After his final spurt- NO, shut up!

Stephen Fry

Well, Port Talbot may be less than 30,000 pounds, but it's like that old joke isn't it? About the atomic bomb going off in Cardiff, and causing seven pounds worth of damage.

Stephen Fry

It was in 686 AD, almost a century after the rest of the country. Subjugated by Cædwalla who was king of the West Saxons and who had killed most of the Pagan population to Christianize it. Good ol' Christianity.

Stephen Fry

So tonight we have three astronauts, and one astro-minus-25. Ha, the things I do with words.

Stephen Fry

It's like having your own little performing donkeys.

Stephen Fry

I'm looking at my information card here because you're really pumping me, Alan. You're pumping me.